


The Blackwell Job

by NightsMistress



Category: Blackwell Series (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26432095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: Rosa and Joey see off a ghost while trying to talk around the Lauren Blackwell shaped elephant in the room.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Press Start VI





	The Blackwell Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/gifts).



Several months had passed since Rosa put up her website, and finally it was paying off. She couldn't say that business was booming, but it was nice to have several ghosts lined up in a night rather than stumbling across them. The latest consult was Easy Acres Assisted Living, who had either never heard of Rosa and Joey before from other nursing homes or were so desperate to move on one of their residents that they didn't care. Rosa had promised the director that she would be discreet. Joey had made no such promises, but as Rosa was the only one who could hear him, that didn't matter.

Her promise was therefore why they were wandering the corridors late at night with a whispering orderly, using her MyPhone to guide her steps, as opposed to the fluorescent lights. Apparently discretion meant not waking up the residents.

"Now, I don't believe in ghosts," the orderly said firmly. She was an older woman, shorter than Rosa with a general world-weary demeanour. "But if anyone was gonna haunt this place, it's Alfie. He's been here ten years and never had anyone visit."

"Is that uncommon?"

"No, especially when you suffer from dementia like Alfie did."

"She's not wrong, sweetheart," Joey drawled. "Take it from me, no one visits the dementia ward."

Rosa shot Joey a quelling look before returning her attention to the orderly.

"Yeah. I guess so," she said noncommittally. 

They stopped outside a door with a plaque reading Room 189 mounted on it. The orderly swallowed nervously.

"Anyway, this is his room. I promise we do clean it up, it's just that …"

"It's fine," Rosa said, trying to be reassuring. "I understand."

"You are a professional…" the orderly said, it being more of a question than Rosa would have liked, but understandable under the circumstances. The orderly swallowed again. "I'll leave you to it."

The orderly left, shooting Rosa a few anxious looks over her shoulder as she turned the corner. Rosa pasted a smile on her face and waited a minute from when she could no longer see the orderly before letting it drop with an emphatic exhale of breath.

"Yeesh," Joey said. "I thought she'd never stop talking."

He was right, but Rosa didn't want to admit it to him. Joey would be insufferable afterward.

"At least this time we don't have to break in," she said instead. "I think I'm banned from almost every nursing home and hospital in New York."

"You still can, if you miss it."

Rosa ignored Joey, turning the handle and pushing the door open. It opened smoothly, to her surprise. Old habits died hard, as they said, and she was more accustomed to breaking in than she would want to admit.

The room inside was as messy as described. Several cardboard boxes were flipped upside down, their contents scattered across the room. Rosa picked her way through the discarded papers and knick-knacks. There was a brittle crack underfoot and she winced; clearly she wasn't as good at this as she would like. Wedged in a corner was a rocking chair, still upright though bare of cushions, and she thought that this would be where the ghost would manifest. She stopped a few steps away from the chair and waited.

She shivered as the temperature suddenly dropped a few degrees, and then the ghost appeared. He was an older man, dressed formally in a black suit with a dusty red bow-tie, and his thinning hair carefully combed over. He looked too young to be their ghost, but in Rosa's experience ghosts reflected how they thought they looked in life and few people had a truly objective perspective on their appearance. He muttered under his breath constantly, the words slurring together, and Rosa couldn't pick out anything she could use. He didn't seem to see her though, so that made it easier for her to search his belongings for clues as to why he would not move on.

"I love what he's done with the place," Joey remarked, staring down at what appeared to be insurance papers. 

"It's certainly pointed," Rosa said, walking over to Joey to pick up one of the papers. It wasn't insurance papers, but instead his admission to Easy Acres Assisted Living. A photograph of him was paperclipped to the front; he looked older in the photograph, dressed in a hospital smock and staring vacantly at the ground. She flipped it over for any clues, but the back was unmarked.

"Alfred Winter," Rosa read aloud. "No known family, dementia, requires around the clock care."

She sighed, letting her hand fall to her side and gave herself a moment. She had hated visiting Auntie Lauren in the hospital, even knowing now that it was in part for Rosa's sake that she was encouraged to go. She hadn't let herself think of what it would have been like if no one had visited at all, and if Auntie Lauren had withered and died alone and unacknowledged like Alfred Winter had.

"You all right?" Joey asked.

Rosa shook her head to shake the cobwebs from it. She could deal with the grief later, probably with the aid of a cheap bottle of wine. She had a job to do.

"I'm fine," Rosa said and grinned sheepishly. Joey stared at her for a moment before shaking his head.

"Whatever you say, kid."

The rest of the papers were not helpful. All they showed was that Alfred had been in assisted living for a decade, and had deteriorated in that time. It was nothing that the orderly had not already told them. 

She moved then to the photographs. There weren't many, mostly with Alfred and a tall, stocky woman who Rosa assumed was his wife. They looked sad in all of the photographs, even while smiling, as if they had lived with it for so long that it had stamped itself into their features. Then she found the one at the back, its delicate frame protected with bubble wrap. She peered through the bubbles.

The photograph was of a college student, smiling at the camera. He was wearing a University of California sweatshirt, but it looked old-fashioned. His haircut was old-fashioned as well, short and feathered. Rosa had seen photographs of her father as a teenager, and it was a bit like that.

"This photo's kinda old," she observed aloud. "Maybe the 70s?"

"What?" Joey said. He drifted over to look over her shoulder. 

"The records said that Alfred had no family," Rosa mused. "Who could this be?"

Joey sucked in a breath, which was strange because he didn't need to breathe.

"Don't worry about searching for him," he said, his voice strained. "I know who he is."

"He's dead?" Rosa asked, and then, when Joey didn't answer, added, "Joey?"

"Hold your horses!" Joey snapped. "I'm takin' care of it!"

"Right," Rosa said, and stepped back to let him do his thing.

Joey moved closer to Alfred.

"Dad?"

Alfred's expression lit up, and he focused on Joey for the first time since the two of them had entered the room. It was heartbreaking, because it was rooted in a lie. 

"Son!" he said brightly. "I've been waiting for you."

"Sorry, dad. I've been busy with school."

"No need to apologize," Alfred said, shaking his head. "Your mother and I knew you'd be busy. We always knew you'd make something of yourself."

"Don't worry, I'm buckling down on the books."

"Come closer. You don't sound right -- let me take a look at you."

Joey moved closer, and Alfred peered at his face. Rosa could see realization dawn on the ghost; the false energy drained from him leaving acceptance in its wake. He sat up in his chair and looked at both Rosa and Joey in turn.

"You're not my son," he said. "I don't know you at all."

Rosa stepped forward.

"Mr Winter, my name is Rosangela Blackwell. I'm sorry."

Alfred looked at her. He tried to smile.

"I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Yeah," she said.

"I knew," Alfred continued. "I kept wanting my boy to visit, but Jamie's been dead for years. I knew that. He died in a car accident while studying out of state. I don't know why I'd forgotten."

"It's all right."

"Here." Joey had already taken his necktie off. "Take this."

Alfred took one end of the tie. Rosa took the other, and pulled him in to eternity.

Alfred Winter went quietly into the light. In a way, he'd been slipping toward it for years and all Rosa did was provide the last push before he went on his way. She told herself that was comforting as she stepped back through the portal to the real world. 

Joey was staring at the photograph, his expression impossible to interpret. It usually was when it came to Auntie Lauren.

"Joey, why didn't you tell me that Auntie Lauren helped his son?"

Joey shrugged.

"City like this, bound to happen that there'll be legacy cases."

Rosa conceded the point with a nod. "It's sad though. Unfair."

"Life aint fair, sweetheart," Joey said acerbically. "And if you're real unlucky, death aint fair either."

"He would have been one of the last ones she did," Rosa observed.

"One of," was all Joey would say. 

Rosa looked across at him, before deciding that it wasn't worth trying to prise out this secret from him today. Instead, she pulled out her phone and checked the time. 

"Come on," she said. "We'll be late for our next appointment. We've got half an hour to get across town and I don't know if we'll make it."

"The dead will wait," Joey said, but followed along in her wake regardless.


End file.
